Monday, October 31, 2016

School districts, counties and spooky festivals across the US of A are banning clown costumes this year, after a summer of panic-stricken hysteria over “killer clowns” and soaring sales of evil clown masks.

The creepy clown craze started in Greenville, South Carolina in August 2016 after unsubstantiated reports surfaced that clowns were spotted trying to lure children into the woods.

The furor has since ignited a nationwide phenomenon, with clown sightings kept happening, across the south in Florida and Kentucky and up to Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Here's a sample of hair-raising incidents. An armed clown hoax temporarily put a Massachusetts college on lockdown. Hundreds of students in Pennsylvania State University swarmed surrounding campus streets to carry out a mass clown hunt. And from RainbowCityin Alabama, it was reported that at least seven people faced felony charges in making a terrorist threat connected to “clown-related activity”. In Virginia, police had arrested two teens for wearing clown outfits and chasing children. And police in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, arrested a man for falsely claiming he had seen a clown trying to lure children and chased it into the woods. He had made it all up, he told police.

How grave is this clown threat or is it merely a runaway prank – nobody knows for sure.

The mass hysteria has not yet led to any serious injuries or deaths, likely because most of the clown sightings involved either young pranksters dressed as clowns or callers inventing clown stories.

Anyway, it’s no surprise one of the hottest 2016 Halloween outfits is a clown.

But clowns are turning Halloween from fun-scary to scary-scary.

In fact, in Kemper County, Mississippi, local authorities went a step further, creating a countyordinanceto make it illegal to appear in clown costume, mask or makeup until November 01.

McDonald’s in New York had told the AssociatedPress the company was being “thoughtful in respect to Ronald McDonald’s participation in community events” as a result of the “current climate around clown sightings in communities”.

Clowns have long terrified both children and adults, especially in the 1980s after King created the nightmare-inducing clown Pennywise (left) in the horror novel, "It", which was later turned into a movie.

Criminologists and psychologists agreethe root of the fear lies in the fact that clowns wear heavy makeup and paint extreme emotions on their faces that hide their true identity and feelings.

“The fascination with clowns is really the fact that they’re not real,” says Scott Bonn, a criminologist and professor of sociology at Drew University in New Jersey. “We don’t know what’s beneath that makeup. It could be anyone or anything. They’re actually very frightening”.

David Kiser, Ringling Bros’ clown expert, has this to say: “…clowns hold up a mirror on society, so we can see the absurd in ourselves. So to be afraid of them is ultimately to be afraid of yourself”.

Copy-cat incidents involving clowns have also been reported in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.

According to Google Trends, interest in clowns tends to spike each year ahead of Halloween on October 31 but a wave of creepy clowns first spotted around the US of A has brought with it a frantic frenzy of goose-bumpy fear.

Friday, October 28, 2016

Malaysia’s Budget 2017 is just ho-hum. It is best described as perfunctory, pedestrian and platitudinous.

No wonder, opposition parliamentarians staged a walkout. They had to keep their wits about them – if they had stayed back and listen to PM Najib Razak blather, they would have to suffer a slow death from passionless paroxysms of lifeless lethargy. Really.

After all, Budget 2017 did not contain any major new reforms to address the country’s underlying fiscal weaknesses.

Moody’s in a report released Tuesday, said it is challenging for the government to meet their 3.1% of GDP fiscal deficit target for this year. And for 2017, revenue remains the binding constraint to providing further support to the economy.

Fitch are expecting Malaysia’s 2016 deficit to come in at 3.2% of GDP – one percentage point higher than Putrajaya’s 3.1% target – although they believe the official deficit target of 3% in 2017 will be achievable.

1MDB continue to haunt us. Fitch viewed the unresolved issues over 1MDB as an indication that governance standards remain a weakness in Malaysia’s credit profile.

Sure, Fitch opined that the 1MDB impact on government policymaking, political stability and fiscal finances is limited thus far but the 1MDB hot potato “remains a source of uncertainty” nonetheless.

Najib has successfully kept a very tight lid on 1MDB but when the latter goes kablooey – I honestly don’t know what will become of this country!

Diwali is just a day away. It is timely because thinking about the sorry state of affairs in this country is enough to make anyone severely depressed, if not suicidal.

The Berjaya University College of Hospitality students conceived this:

A grand effort!

On Thursday, I attended the Metro Toastmasters meeting at No.12 in Jalan Sg. Besi, KL. I took up two roles (again) and I was Toastmaster-of-the-Evening as well as a project speaker.